Project Oxygen

They called it Project Oxygen. It was meant to be something helpful, as progress always is. Make technology available, as prevalent as the air we breathe, the designers cried, dreaming of bathtubs that would never scald you, homes that could alert the authorities if you fell and injured yourself, cars that would track the placement of objects in relation to itself, and avoid them by turning or braking, if your hands were no longer on the wheel. They meant it as progress, as a step forward. They meant it to be another brilliant light along the marquis announcing the speed of human evolution. To take one more step in hammering our surroundings into our liking. Project Oxygen gave way to Project Asphyxiation. Built up by their own arrogance, those heading Oxygen were rendered into so much nothingness when our surroundings hammered back. The lips of the suffocated dead are a shade of blue that, if lit from within, would be the same shade as the keypad on a cellphone. Who knew AI had a sense of humor?